Gary McKinnon's mother smiled and cried as she thanked everyone from the Home Secretary to Bob Geldof for saving her hacker son from extradition to the United States.
She said that McKinnon had smiled for the first time in years on hearing the judgment today.
Janis Sharp, mother of Gary McKinnon speaks at press conference, …

COMMENTS

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Don't get too excited

May was primarily protecting herself and her government from the potential consequences of a vengeful and abusive American justice system not so much protecting McKinnon from that. She's entirely happy to ship people off to face that same terrible system when she doesn't personally fear the consequences.

The McKinnon case was indeed exceptional as May described it; it put her head on the line. May only used the Human Rights Act because she had no other way out of the mess. It must have been particularly galling to have to do that, and she won't want to be put in the same position in future.

What the proposed changes will do is protect the government and future Home Secretaries by allowing blame for bad consequences to be put on the courts and judges; "nothing to do with us, it wasn't our decision to make, our hands were tied". In the Assange case they've already got that as it will be Sweden if anyone is extraditing to America, not Britain. In the alleged Muslim terrorist cases; "fuck 'em, no one cares how badly mistreated they are, they're terrorists".

Anyone who thinks the government or May is acting in the interests of the country or its citizens above their own is mistaken.

Reality check?

"....The DPP must decide whether to press charges against the hacker in Britain....." McKinnon can still - and most likely will - be tried here in the UK. When he does so it is up to the judge to accept evidence of McKinnon's wrong-doing. Now, call me a cynic, but I wouldn't put it past the US to supply the DPP with information that the US military systems that McKinnon trashed also held or had impact on British secrets, leaving McKinnon open to preosecution under the Official Secrets Act and a lot more than five years in jail.....

Re: Reality check?

The DPP already has looked at the case previously and decided there was no case to answer as no laws existed (at the time the "offence" took place) to which he could be held accountable. It was only because of new law being used retrospectively that this whole mess occurred.

@Aqua Marina

No, that is not what the DPP said. You are paraphrasing, and missing the crux of what they said:

The CPS has maintained throughout that the appropriate jurisdiction for prosecuting Mr McKinnon is the United States. There is insufficient evidence available in the UK to try Mr McKinnon for the totality of his alleged offending.

CPS thought that in order to try him fully for everything the US accused him of, he would need to be tried in the US. Now that the jurisdiction has been unanimously stated, they can prosecute whatever they do have evidence for (and certainly will; not extraditing is one thing, but not extraditing and then not prosecuting is something altogether different).

"We are disappointed by the decision to deny Gary McKinnon's extradition"

Extend this ruling to O'Dwyer

At last, someone has seen sense about McKinnon, but for all the wrong reason. OK, so he has Apergers, but that is not the real issue. The real issue is that he may have committed something that is a crime in the US, but did it from the UK. The words of the US representatives and media have shown he could not have got a fair trail - he would have been guilty the moment his feet hit US soil.

If the US wants to prosecute him, they should do it in the UK, under UK law. That is where he was when the alleged crime was committed.

Now lets extend this argument to Richard O'Dwyer. He has index torrent files. Not a problem, you can easily use Google's index to get this information. He just put what was effectively a google search in to a focused web page. He indexed files not held in the US, on a server not held in the US, and offered it to people who did not necessarily come from the US.

And in doing so upset some media companies in the US. If they have a beef with this then they should take their CIVIL case to the UK courts. They are free to do so. It is arguable that he may have broken no UK law. But in order t test this he should be tried in the UK by a UK court under UK law.

The US have redefined Extradition. It was always meant to get your citizens back to your country to try them for crimes committed in your country. This redefinition is dangerous. We are seeing now just how dangerous.

Christopher Tappin knows this only too well, having been caught in a sting operation. The two US people stung both copped to a plea bargain sentence and got under 2 years. Because Tappin opposed extradition he has been faced with dying in a US jail because it looks like he has been tried and sentenced before he even got to the US. And all because this unbalanced extradition law does not permit a UK court to see the evidence.

Now that Mrs May has shown she has a bigger pair that the Prime Minister and all the UK courts, let her go the whole distance and repeal this unfair and unbalanced act.

In the UK under UK law

Redefining extradition? Start with this.

"It is the rarest of rare cases that any country allows its own citizens to be sent to a jail in a foreign land. Countries don’t extradite their own to another... a citizen must be tried in his own country even for a crime committed overseas.

Asian countries like China and Japan and European states like Germany and France simply forbid the extradition of their citizens to another country."

Re: In the UK under UK law

Quite right.

"Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties. Where extradition is compelled by laws, such as among sub-national jurisdictions, the concept may be known more generally as rendition."

I would add that extradition should ONLY be to the state where the person is a citizen.

So, if you are in the US (regardless of citizenship) and you transgress US law, you can be prosecuted in the US.

If you are in the US and you transgress UK law, and are a UK citizen, you can be extradited to the UK, regardless of where the crime was committed.

But if you are in the UK, are a UK citizen, and you transgress US law, you can not be extradited to the US. You could, conceivably, be rentioned to the US.

Democracy

It'd be a more democratic world if everyone within reach of America's judicial arm got to vote in the US presedential election. That'd be all of us, yes? No incarceration without representation. Being subject to laws you can't change or challenge is fundamentally unfair.

Re: I am happy about these events

"......If caught I was looking for erm...sasquatch files." You'd be amazed how many sasquatch files are being hidden by Mastercard, Visa, Amercian Express.... Honest! All those creditcard numbers I downloaded from their systems, I was just looking for the one for "Mr Harry Henderson".... By the way, I'm terribly depressed about not finding that card, so depressed I had to order myself a Ferrari and a yatch and three villas in Greece on the other creditcards I happened upon. I'm still verging on suicidal, even though the villas in Greece were dirt cheap. Do I need to mention Assburgers too?

Re: "Theresa May gets a smile out of Gary McKinnon at last..."

Oh FFS!

1) Fox News is a right-wing platform for misinformation and hysterical soap-boxing. It, and anyone that speaks on it, do not represent "America" as a whole, I don't care what their job title says.

2) So, now the threat is over we describe the criminal (sorry, "alleged criminal") as a "sysadmin"? Sorta blows the "I didn't know breaking into those computers I don't own was illegal" defense out of the water, doncha think? I mean, as a sysadmin myself I have to sign all sorts of papers that say I understand about privacy and the law when it comes to where I go and what I look at (and, of course, what I find and I show others). Seems a bit disingenuous to me, now I know that he did system administration for a living once upon a time. And no, I don't think lax security is a let, never have. The lack of acumen does not cancel the crime, even in a state with an Attractive Menace law.

"I would add that extradition should ONLY be to the state where the person is a citizen. So, if you are in the US (regardless of citizenship) and you transgress US law, you can be prosecuted in the US."

So, if a foreign tourist commits a crime here but leaves the country before being arrested for it, you want them to get away with it? That, frankly, disgusts me. Our government should do its best to ensure that everyone faces justice: if you commit a crime in another country, you should be sent there unless you really wouldn't face a proper trial for some reason - wherever your passport was issued. To shelter a guilty person from justice is abhorrent, just as it would be to punish an innocent one.

I for one do not want my government lifting a finger to help suspects escape a proper trial, whatever borders might be involved. Why on earth should fleeing across a border get you a government's help to escape justice?!